Numerous procedures involving catheters and other minimally invasive devices may be performed to provide a wide variety of treatments, such as ablation, angioplasty, dilation or the like. Such procedures often include positioning minimally-invasive devices, such as balloon catheters, within varying physiological locations throughout the body, including vascular regions such as arteries, veins, or other blood vessels. Vascular-based diagnoses and treatments can introduce challenges to the effective positing and operation of an inserted medical device or instrument. For example, a device or instrument may need to be routed through a blood vessel to a target location in the midst of normal (if not turbulent or disturbed) blood flow through the vessel, which results in varying thermal loads on the device being used. For thermally-based procedures, such as tissue ablation, the unpredictable, often-changing thermal load presented by such an environment can greatly alter the efficacy of a device and its ability to deliver the desired therapy in a given time period.
In addition to the varying, thermally-loaded surroundings, blood vessels and endoluminal tissues can have widely varying dimensions from one patient to the next. As a result, a device appropriately sized for a particular application or procedure in one patient may not be suitable for a similar application in someone having smaller stature or tissue structure. For example, when a balloon catheter is employed, it is often manufactured or constructed having particular shape or dimension for a specific application, and as such, any given catheter with a balloon may be limited to use in situations where the fixed dimensions of the balloon are appropriate. As such, the availability of multiple catheters having varying fixed dimensions may be needed to successfully perform a series of desired treatments.
In view of the above, it would be desirable to provide a medical device having an expandable element, such as a balloon, in which the particular size, shape, and/or dimensions of the balloon may be controlled and modified during use, and it would be further desirable to control the operation of a such a device to account for varying environmental conditions in the vicinity of the device in order to safely and effectively treat a tissue region.